


Several Things (Not Five) That Liz Lemon Might Have Prevented with a Simple Google Search

by slightlykylie



Category: 30 Rock, The Office (US)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Kids, Lizards, Set in earlier season, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 15:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlykylie/pseuds/slightlykylie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In retrospect, Liz could recognize that it maybe hadn’t been the greatest idea, showing up at her first Mommy and Me childcare class with a two-foot spiny-tailed lizard instead of a child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Several Things (Not Five) That Liz Lemon Might Have Prevented with a Simple Google Search

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in the femslash10 ficathon for cinaed on LJ. This is set in the early seasons; I'm not up on current ones. If Liz is pregnant/has a baby/is married/etc now this isn't about that.

In retrospect, Liz could recognize that it maybe hadn’t been the greatest idea, showing up at her first Mommy and Me childcare class with a two-foot spiny-tailed lizard instead of a child. In retrospect, given the choice, maybe she should have stayed home. But hindsight is always 20/20, and Liz really didn’t think she could be held responsible for the entire situation. After all –  
  
“No!” For about the tenth time that hour, Liz jerked the lizard up into the air, away from the little girl in the play space next to them. It was hard to wholly dislike the kid, since she was one of about two babies in the room who wasn’t scared of the lizard, but she had been pulling little Gemma’s tail at every chance she got, and Liz had a feeling that sooner or later the girl was going to get bitten. That would not help matters any. “Just – play nice, see? We play nice with Gemma,” she said, tucking the lizard’s tail back under the blanket it was swaddled in. Liz’s plan was to keep the lizard tucked away as much as possible, in the hope that people would forget that it was not a baby. In fact, at the beginning of the class she had been hoping that people wouldn’t notice that at all. She might have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for that stupid fingerpainting exercise. She had been hoping for activities more along the lines of snuggling and storytime and sweet lullabies originally sung by Kermit the Frog.  
  
But now here was the kid from the next playspace, toddling over again. “Bwocks,” the girl informed her, and pushed a few alphabet blocks closer to Liz. “Him bwocks.”  
  
“Oh… yes! Those are blocks,” Liz said encouragingly. Maybe if she were good enough with the children in the class, she could earn back some of the points she’d lost by not technically bringing in a child herself.  
  
“ _No,_ ” the girl said, scowling. “ _Him_ bwocks.”  
  
“Uh… right. Blocks?” Liz asked, cautiously.  
  
The girl stomped in frustration. “Him, him, him!” she cried, pushing the blocks closer to Liz. “Baby Littlefoot bwocks!”  
  
 _Littlefoot?_ Helplessly, Liz looked over at the little girl’s mother, who surprised Liz by actually smiling at her. No one else in the class had been smiling at Liz very much today. “She wants the lizard to play with the blocks,” the mother explained. "I got her a DVD of _The Land Before Time_ last month, and now she watches it about three times a week. Sorry."  
  
“Oh.” Liz looked down. “Um… sure.” Gingerly, she withdrew the lizard from the blanket partway and took hold of one of its little paws. “Here we go, Gemma, playing with blocks!” she said, trying to sound very excited. “We put this block here – see? I put this block here, Gemma!” She stacked two alphabet blocks on top of one another with her left hand. The lizard seemed unimpressed. “And then – we put this one…” Holding the lizard’s paw in her right hand, she made it reach out for another block. “We push this one over here and…”  
  
The lizard peed on her.  
  
“ _Son_ of a --!” Liz jumped up, dancing around and pulling the soaked patch of her T-shirt away from her body. The lizard took advantage of the opportunity to dash under the arts and supplies cabinet. Four of the babies and three of the mothers screamed, which Liz thought was excessive, but then she tripped over someone’s block building and did a little screaming of her own, which made it tough to judge. The kid whose building it had been added its voice to the chorus. There was a triangular block sticking into Liz’s side and lizard pee soaking through her shirt. This was officially a Bad Day.  
  
So Liz’s new plan became to curl up on the ground and pretend she wasn’t there. It was an excellent plan in the short run, but maybe not so good long-term. All of the shrieking was making her head hurt. She could have killed for a basket of cheesy fries right about now.  
  
“Hey.” Liz became aware that a nonshrieking adult human being was standing over her. A moment later, she registered that the nonshrieking person’s voice was also not angry. She opened her eyes in simple surprise. It was the mother of the little tail-pulling horror who’d started this whole thing. “Here –“ The woman was stretching her hand down to help Liz up. Liz got up, checking her shirt to see if there was any blood on her shirt where the block had been sticking into her. There wasn’t; the wetness was all lizard pee. It smelled terrible.  
  
“Found Littlefoot!" the girl said, toddling over. Liz noticed with great apprehension that she had the lizard clasped in her chubby little hands. She was also covered with dust bunnies, presumably from under the cabinet. Aha! The staff at the Mommy and Me center did not keep their playroom properly cleaned! Liz began to formulate a counterattack for the inevitable moment when the center brought some sort of lawsuit against her.  
  
“Not now, sweetie,” the mother said, taking the lizard from her daughter’s hands and proffering it to Liz. Liz stared at it for a moment: she really didn’t want to take the thing back. “We’ll go to the pet store later and be friends with the... Littlefeet... there. This one belongs to this lady.”  
  
“Oh, no! Be friends with it now. I mean, because it isn’t. Isn’t mine,” Liz said, feeling disorganized. “I’m Liz,” she added, sticking out a hand to shake, then realizing a second later that it was the one she’d been plucking at the lizard-pee stain on her shirt with. She used it to push her hair back over her forehead instead. “Lemon,” she said, sticking out the other hand.  
  
The other woman shook Liz’s hand. Liz had a suspicion she was trying not to laugh. “I’m Karen. Karen Filippelli. And this is Gwen,” she added, indicating the little girl, who was tugging at the lizard’s tail again.  
  
“I Gwen! Where lemons?” the girl asked.  
  
“No, no lemons. Le-mon,” Liz articulated, slowly and carefully.  
  
“Le-mons.”  
  
“No, one lemon. I mean, no lemons. Just Lemon. Liz Lemon. Me. Lemon.” That ought to make it all clear.  
  
“So I think our little adventures with Mr. Lizard here have sort of wrapped things up for the day.” Karen gestured around at the rest of the mothers in the room, who were gathering up their things and sticking their children’s teeny feet into teeny shoes in record time.  
  
“Our” little adventures? “Ms. Lizard,” Liz said, randomly.  
  
“Oh. Sorry. Not Mrs.?” Karen asked, eyes gleaming.  
  
“I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t know. If she is I wasn’t there. For the ceremony,” Liz explained.  
  
“Ah. She’s not yours?”  
  
“No, couldn’t you tell?” Liz took the lizard back from Gwen regretfully and wrapped it up in the blanket, resisting an urge to tie its little head off tightly enough to strangle it. “If she knew me maybe she wouldn’t have peed all over me.”  
  
“That… actually isn’t pee.”  
  
“What?” Now Liz was positive that Karen was trying not to laugh at her.  
  
“Lizards don’t actually pee liquid – more like crystals. The liquid they let out is… more like poop.”  
  
“Oh, man! I’ve got lizard diarrhea on my shirt?”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“Wait, how do you even know this? What are you, some kind of stalker herpetologist? Did Susie send you to keep tabs on me?”  
  
“Okay, you know what, I’m pretty sure there’s a really good story here. Why don’t we go somewhere where you can take a load off and this one –“ she pointed at Gwen – “can get an apple juice, and you can tell me about it?”  
  
“But I’ve got lizard diarrhea on my shirt.”  
  
“There’s a mall a block down with an Old Navy and a Denny’s.”  
  
“I want to go to there,” said Liz.  
  


* * *

  
  
“So you’ve been friends with this woman for a _month_ , and you never knew it was a lizard she had and not a kid?!”  
  
“We’re not really friends! We just ride together in the elevator a lot. And we eat at the same Tim Horton’s. And she always wants to sit with me there. Because I want to adopt a baby, and she was always telling me stories about –“  
  
“Her lizard.”  
  
“She kept calling it her baby! I mean, sometimes she would call it her “ackie”, but how was I supposed to know that was a thing? I thought that was one of those weird endearments that mothers come up with for their children.”  
  
“You seriously never picked it up from context?”  
  
“She used to talk about _cosleeping_ with it.”  
  
“Ew.”  
  
“I was very encouraging. I said there was too much stigma around that sort of thing. Oh God.”  
  
“I’m surprised she didn’t take it with her on her trip.”  
  
“Her saying she couldn’t take Gemma along because of airline policies makes a little more sense now. I was just so excited to have a kid to babysit that I never stopped to think.” Liz took a sip of her Diet Coke. “So how do you know so much about lizards, anyway?”  
  
“I have younger brothers who were into reptiles. And a former coworker who used to bring his Komodo dragon in to work to guard his pencil drawer every now and again.”  
  
Liz narrowly avoided a spit-take. “You’re kidding.”  
  
“Nope.” Karen held a sippy-cup up to Gwen’s lips. “Here you go, sweetie, drink your apple juice. I guess it wasn’t totally unjustified,” she said over Gwen’s head, to Liz. “After your desk supplies have been encased in Jell-O or stuck in a vending machine a certain number of times, you start taking precautionary measures.”  
  
“Oh my God. You work at my job?”  
  
“What? Where do you work?”  
  
Liz thought back to this past week’s episode: not that funny. Somehow she didn’t want to admit to this girl with the startling green eyes that she, Liz, worked on a not that funny TV show. “Nowhere. I mean, never mind.”  
  
“I used to have one of those jobs too,” said Karen.  
  


* * *

  
  
“No lizard this time?”  
  
Liz looked up to see Karen standing over her, holding Gwen on her hip. “Oh – no,” she said, pulling her left shoe off her foot and waiting for a devastatingly witty reply to come to her. Nothing came. “No,” she said again, in lieu of the witty thing.  
  
“No baby either, I see. How were you planning on working this today?”  
  
Liz held up a notebook. “I’m going to take notes.”  
  
“Take notes at a Mommy and Me class?”  
  
“I sort of have to come to class so the instructor can say I did it so she can tell the adoption agency that I did it so they won’t throw out my application. It’s Frank’s fault,” Liz said hurriedly.  
  
“Frank…?”  
  
“He’s another never mind. But I don’t think I earned any points last week with the lizard –“  
  
“No,” Karen noted.  
  
“And I didn’t think I should kidnap a child just to come here –“  
  
“Though you thought about it.”  
  
“Of course I did. But I decided against it! I’m a moral person,” Liz said, thrusting her pencil into the air. Gwen made a grab for it. Liz, doing some fast mental math (baby + lead + sharp point = bad idea), pulled it back down again. “Anyway, so I thought note-taking was my best option. Also I thought I could take care of babies when their mothers have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be the standby mother in the room.”  
  
“I see.” Karen’s eyes were alight with mirth. “Well, I’ll be sure to take at least two bathroom breaks, so you won’t get bored. How about that, Gwen? Do you want Liz to play with you, Gwen?” she asked, jiggling the baby a little.  
  
“Where Littlefoot?” Gwen asked, suspiciously.  
  
“At home,” Liz said. _At its home, with Susie, whom I am never going to speak with again. Because she swore out a restraining order against me. On behalf of Gemma. For taking her out of her terrarium and bringing her to a Mommy and Me class._  
  
“Want baby Littlefoot. Go there,” said Gwen.  
  
“No, Gwen. We’re going to play here today. We’re going to play with blocks. Remember the blocks?”  
  
“Bwocks fall. Le-mon,” said Gwen.  
  
“Your kid has an inconvenient memory,” Liz told Karen.  
  
“Nah, she likes you. Anyway, we’ll build some new blocks with her. Then she’ll have more positive associations.”  
  
“Like, when you’re in the bathroom?”  
  
“No, I don’t think so,” Karen said, attempting a diplomatic smile. “Just play with me and Gwen through the class. If the instructor asks we’ll tell her we’re lesbians.”  
  
“Oh,” said Liz.  
  


* * *

  
  
“He took off four months after Gwen was born. He’s living with the girlfriend now.” Karen’s voice was brittle.  
  
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Liz upended her wine glass, then refilled it and thoughtfully handed it to Karen. Karen sipped it a little more slowly as Liz poured a second one for herself. They were at Liz’s apartment the next Saturday night: Karen’s ex had Gwen for the weekend.  
  
“Whatever, he’s just the last in a string of bad choices. I always fall for these guys who are all charisma and no substance.”  
  
“To hell with charisma!” Liz declared, lifting her glass.  
  
“To hell with guys,” Karen said, lifting her own, and Liz laughed. Karen sobered quickly as she continued. “Honestly, though, I just… I seem to have a habit of picking guys who fall for other girls. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she added, a sudden vulnerability invading her eyes.  
  
“What? Nothing’s wrong with you! Who are these guys leaving you? Where’s their heads?” Liz was feeling a little drunk, but also very sincere.  
  
Karen laughed. “Thanks, Liz. No, seriously, I don’t know. The one before Dan was a lousy situation, I was sort of the rebound girl and then –“  
  
“The other team stole the ball back?”  
  
“Something like that. But with Dan –“ She exhaled, a short puff of air that lifted her bangs a little bit. “I don’t know what happened. This – _Lynda_ – chick didn’t come along until after we were married. And…” Karen bit her lip.  
  
“Oh, no.” Liz saw that Karen looked like she was going to cry. She didn’t know how she, Liz, would bear it if Karen started to cry. That would be too sad. Too, too sad. Too, too, too – oh, Liz was too, too drunk right now. Too drunk and too –  
  
“Shh,” Liz said, and as Karen’s eyebrows went up, Liz realized she was leaning in. “Shh,” Liz said, and then kissed Karen.  
  
Sometime between five minutes and five years later, Liz pulled away. She found Karen looking at her steadily; Karen didn’t look half as bewildered as Liz felt. “Oh,” Liz said, stupidly. “Oh, is that what that is?”  
  
“What what is?” Karen blinked, and now her expression had gone blank, as though it had taken her a second to process that she wasn’t sure how to process this.  
  
“Being a lesbian,” Liz said.  
  
“What?”  
  
Liz cleared her throat. “I think maybe I am actually a lesbian.”  
  
Karen stared at her, her expression going even blanker. “Wait. Did you actually not know that?”  
  
It took Liz a second; then she started laughing. Then Karen started laughing, and then Liz was laughing harder, and then they were kissing again and then they were on the floor and they were still kissing and Liz had a fleeting thought that her rug must be scandalized because it had never seen anything like this, never, ever, ever.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Here,” Liz said, taking something out of her pocket. Gwen looked at it for a moment with an appraising expression; then her face lit up.  
  
“Baby Littlefoot! Yay, Lemon! Vroom! Vroom!” She sped away, making rather inexplicable racecar noises as she swung the lizard through the air.  
  
Karen stepped up to Liz’s side. “Liz. Please tell me that wasn’t –“  
  
“It’s plastic.”  
  
“Oh thank God.” Karen’s face relaxed, and Liz laughed. “Hold on a sec, I have to go grab her and get those shoes off her.”  
  
“Yeah, why do we have to do that, anyway? The shoes-off thing?”  
  
“For the kids? I don’t know. For the adults, I think it’s because they figure most of the mothers will be wearing heels that aren’t safe on the mats. I don’t think they figure on a lot of adults coming in here in Keds.” Karen threw a teasing glance down at Liz’s shoes. “Be right back.”  
  
When Karen came back, Liz was fiddling with her shoestrings. “So, uh, Karen –“  
  
“Hmm?” Karen was undoing the Velcro on Gwen’s shoes.  
  
“I, erm. So I brought my notebook today, in case you thought I should… in case you didn’t want to –“  
  
“Wait, why would you take notes today?” Karen turned to Liz, frowning. “Aren’t you here with us?”  
  
“Yes! I mean, I think so. I mean –“ Liz was squirming. “As long as… should we still tell the instructor we’re lesbians?”  
  
Karen stared at Liz for a moment, then laughed. “We told her that last week, when you thought you were straight. Now we’re here together, and you want to, what, pretend we broke up and you started a rebound fling with your notebook?”  
  
Liz laughed, but her foot was shifting awkwardly. “Okay. I’ve just never… _been out_ before,” she said, aware as she said it that the hushed italics were completely unnecessary.  
  
“Oh.” Karen’s face registered her understanding. “Well, do you want to play it cool for today, then?”  
  
Liz thought about it.  
  
“Well,” she said eventually. “You’re the hottest date I’ve had in…” She counted it up. “Ever.”  
  
Karen’s face split wide in a beautiful smile.  
  
“So let’s go ahead.” She proffered her arm to Karen. “Shall we?”  
  
“You forgot to take off your other Ked,” Karen said.  
  
“Nerds.”


End file.
